2008 Spain

We were fortunate enough to be invited back to the Jalón valley in Spain for the 2008 Christmas and New Year period to look after a house, which has a wonderful apartment to rent, and a menagerie comprising two elderly dogs and three entertaining cats. The rightly proud owners, Pam and Geoff, are friends of people we have sat for before on two previous occasions (Chris, Yvonne and el perrito, Scamp) and were off to sunny Australia for four weeks to visit family. Isn’t word of mouth wonderful? Christmas and New Year in Spain – yippee!

Our five week trip was marred by a classic family emergency which had me flying home for the five days immediately prior to Christmas Day itself. Nonetheless, Carol and I did manage Christmas together in Spain and we did have a good time, despite the set back and, as it turned out, despite the rather disappointing weather. Meteorologically, the run up to Christmas was pretty good, though yours truly missed some of that sun returning to the UK. After Christmas the weather was, well, mostly pants in all honesty. We averaged about one sunny day a week over that period.

Our moods and enjoyment were enhanced by visits from friends Steve and Rosemary, who stayed with us for ten days to help reduce the stocks of rosado in the Jalon valley,
and by a couple of visits by some camping buddies, Barry and Irene, who were passing through in their campervan en route La Manga for Christmas and New Year. (Blog entries of our exploits, together with a few diary photographs, are in Traveblog.)

I’d say that our highlights were seeing the traditional Three Kings Parade at Dénia on January 5th (Epiphany celebrations) and the colourful fishing port of Villajoyosa, which was new to us. Below is a small collection of our pictorial memories from the trip.